Last week we created Part 1 of scaling a business and within 10 days we immediately ran into a problem. Which forced us to scale back our ad spend and make adjustments to our sales force.

That didn’t take long… 🙂

That‘s business for you. Just when you think you have figured something out, another bottleneck arises. I have a feeling this is going to happen a lot on this Journey. Originally, I was planning on creating a 4 part series, but I think this is going to turn into a 10 part series. It’s important that you guys see our roadblocks and challenges.

Scaling a business, by increasing ad spend, is not as easy as everyone thinks. There are roadblocks, traffic issues, offer issues, funnel problems, shipping, etc.

So do not get discouraged when things pop up. That is to be expected.

The Problem With Our Sales Team

Each Friday I have my sales guy send me the total number of leads, new opportunities, wins, and losses. This last Friday was not great.

We have gone from producing 100 leads a week to 275+.

You would think if the leads more than doubled, the opportunities would more than double.

This was not the case. We had a slight increase in opportunities from the prior weeks but nothing like it should have been.

We overloaded our sales guy with leads and he did not have a system in place to keep track of everyone. New leads were not getting a called right away, and he didn’t have time to follow up.

That is bad.

High-ticket sales don’t just happen.

When selling a higher ticket item, you have to have a sales force that can call immediately and say the right things. For this, we needed a strict sales script.

Curtis and I have shied away from a sales script. Our policy was listening to the prospect, identify the problem, and give the solution. We were there to help.

This works great when you have years of experience. It doesn’t work so well when you have a new salesman.

Once the script was completed, it was important for the leads to be called immediately.

Value per lead drops every minute that passes after the lead is generated. You want to reach them while they are looking at your website.

Why?

Because your ability to create an opportunity diminishes as time passes. Contact rates drop over time and lead qualification rates drop over time. Plus, it’s harder to catch the lead at an available time.

As time passes, that individual may forget or look for other solutions.

This is where my competitive spirit kicks in. I can’t stand the thought of someone going to one of our competitors just because we did not follow up.

I have found that Insidesales.com does a great job of educating sales teams. Here is a link to one of their ebooks, The Ultimate Revenue Engine.

How Sales Reps Are Failing

Sales are not easy and we all appreciate what they do. They are the life-line of the company. Here’s some great insight from a marketer at Inside Sales.

“The average lead response time for a sample of 3,068 sales teams at 38 hours 30 minutes. The same study showed that the average number of contact attempts was just 1.36.

There is a reason why this level of response is inadequate.

Lead response research done by Dr. James Oldroyd, shows that the odds of reaching a new sales lead drop over 10x if you wait longer than the ﬁrst hour of shown interest, and the odds of qualifying that lead decrease 6x.

InsideSales.com shows that at 1.36 contact attempts, a business only contacts just over 40% of leads.

Sales Reps, have to do better if you are going to scale up on leads.

This was our problem. We increases count form 100 to 275. This caused an overload.

Here’s how your sales force can fix the problem.

1. Use your CRM software

We use Infusionsoft as our CRM. They provide a lot of tools you can use to keep track of leads, opportunities, and closing. Use it.

2. Take Notes

When dealing with a large number of opportunities you have to take notes and keep track of conversations.

I can’t tell you how many times I get a phone from a prospective client asking me to recall our conversation 3 months earlier.

Notes make you look good.

3. Set a follow-up date and make them commit

Make sure that each and every conversation you have ends with some type of challenge/commitment.

“People change no faster than they make and keep commitments.”

Meaning as people commit to the next phone call or the next action, they are that much closer to becoming a customer. The more time they with you and your product, the better it is.

4. Make 6-10 Contact Attempts (lots of touches)

I am busy, and I am a businessman. When I am looking to purchase a new product, I have found it takes about 10 to 12 touches.

This might be too much for some people, but all I know is my purchasing behavior likely matches a lot of others.

For example, I’ve been looking to buy a new couch for my office. I found the perfect couch 45 days ago on Amazon. But I kept shopping. I wanted to find something that was a little lower in price.

I have looked at that couch online at least 7 times, I read the reviews, I compared, and I looked for other deals.

This is a normal buying cycle for me. I do it with everything.

Finally, yesterday morning I woke up and bought the couch.

You never know what the buying cycle of a prospective buyer is. So it’s best to follow up 6 to 10 times.

Or better yet…go until you get a definite Yes or No.

5. Call The Leads Within The First 5 Minutes

The quicker you call the higher your chances to turning a lead into an opportunity.

I can’t tell you how impressed people are when you follow up quickly. If you can call the prospect while he is searching for your product or service, you can answer any of his questions and resolve his doubts.

So there you have it…

This was the first roadblock we faced with scaling our business. It is not completely fixed, but we will get there.

Until next time…

If you liked these types of articles, let us know. We love advice. If you have ideas that you can share with our readers, leave a comment.

Thanks for reading. More to come.

Fixing Our Sales Team. Scaling A Business With Facebook, Adwords, and Instagram Part 2

We were approached by a quickly growing sulfur burner company needing video ranking expertise. They came to us, and we delivered. We posted their video on a Thursday and by Friday we had ranked it to the top of YouTube and the front page of Google.